ABSTRACT
In recent years, story-tellers and educationalists have perceived in the culture of Native Americans a respect and love for the land, demonstrative of the moral virtues of care and stewardship, and a spirituality which emphasizes human connectedness to the earth. Historical figures such as Chief Seattle have gained iconic status, becoming symbolic of a type of natural wisdom, expressed through communal values, which western society would do well to learn from1; and, as a result of this perspective, Native American stories have been retold and presented as purveyors of this wisdom (Caduto and Bruchac, 1988a, 1988b). However, the rise of post-colonial consciousness, particularly within the areas of cultural and literary studies, has raised questions regarding the ethics of appropriating stories from colonized cultures. As the native North American Lee Maracle has written:
The truth is that creeping around libraries full of nonsensical anthropocentric drivel, imbuing these findings with falsehood in the name of imagination, then peddling the nonsense as ‘Indian Mythology’ is literary dishonesty. (cited in Green and LeBihan, 1996, p. 297)
The successful novelist Margaret Atwood believes that the best writing about such a group is likely to come from within that group:
…not because those outside it are likely to vilify it, but because they are likely these days, and out of well-meaning liberalism, to simplify and senti-mentalize it, or to get the textures and vocabulary and symbolism wrong. (op. cit, p. 297)
Rather than being treated with respect, the stories may become subjected to misrepresentation and trivialization, their part in a complex system of thought and myth misunderstood and reduced to platitudes, their values and cultural symbols becoming polluted by those of the colonizer and by the commercial forces of post-industrial capitalism.
